Best Stop Smoking Aid

There is more to dark chocolate than meets the eye of the health concious smoker looking for ways improve health and lower the danger of smoking.

This luscious dark chocolate pie is guaranteed to add some sweet heat and tantric appeal to a romantic meal. I don't know if it a smoking alternative but if you want to beat the urge to smoke give this treat a try and you might find it is a best stop smoking aid.

Of its six ingredients, four of them are thought to be aphrodisiacal: Chocolate, almonds, ginger and chile. Powers of attraction aside, this recipe for Chocolate Tantric Pie is unusual and delicious, and is as easy as pie to prepare.

This is a sweet chocolate pie with the spicy bite of ginger and cayenne pepper and no nicotine withdrawl!!!

It’s guaranteed to satisfy your sweet tooth, internally warm your belly, and give you that unmistakable tantric glow. There is very little work to creating this dessert. For a gluten-free version, omit the pie shell for a no-bake flourless torte. You can also pour the pie mixture into a baking dish, just cool before cutting into squares and serve like fudge.

INGREDIENTS
1½ cups organic half-and-half or whipping cream
3 cups semisweet organic chocolate chips
1 cup chopped almonds
1 cup chopped candied ginger
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
9-inch pie crust

1. Over medium heat, bring half-and half or whipping cream to a simmer in a 1-quart saucepan, stirring to prevent scorching on the bottom.

2. Whisk as you slowly pour the chocolate chips into the cream and continue to stir until the chocolate has melted. Stir in half the almonds and half the ginger. Stir in cayenne if using.

3. Pour mixture into a pre-baked 9-inch pie shell. Sprinkle and remaining almonds and ginger on top. Cool until firm, slice, and serve.

Serves 8

Related Companies, a national developer that owns 17 buildings in New York City, is banning smoking in some of its properties, saying the aim is to protect tenants from exposure to secondhand smoke, the New York Times reported Nov. 16.

Common Nicotine Gum Use Adversities

Common complaints among long-term nicotine replacement gum users (one year or greater) include: nicotine addiction and with intense gum cravings realted to nicotine withdrawal, anxiety, irritability, dizziness, headaches, nervousness, hiccups, ringing in the ears, chronic depression, headaches, heart burn, elevated blood pressure, a rapid or irregular heartbeat, sleep disruption, tiredness, a lack of motivation, a heavy feeling, recessed, bleeding and diseased gums, diminished sense of taste, tooth enamel damage, tooth loss, jaw-joint pain and damage (TMJ), canker sores with white patches on the tongue or mouth, bad breath, dry mouth, sore or irritated throat, difficulty swallowing, swollen glands, bronchitis, stomach problems and pain, gastritis, severe bloating, belching, achy muscles and joints, pins and needles in arms and hands, uncontrollable foul smelling gas that lingers, a lack of energy, loss of sex drive, acid reflux, stomach ulcers, fecal impaction from dehydration, scalp tingling, hair loss, acne, facial reddening, chronic skin rashes and concerns about immune system suppression. All this means is that nicotine withdrawal is associated with nicotine replacement making NRT less than a best stop smoking aid because of nicotine's side effects.

Other Health Concerns

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration is not blind. It has seen industry commercials and knows that nicotine gum is addictive and that nicotine withdrawal is a problem encountered by long time users of nicotine replace as a stop smoking alternative. It is being marketed as both a great tasting supplement to smoking and a permanent stand-alone harm reduction solution. Sadly, this is being done without any meaningful long-term research regarding the consequences of long-term NRT use or the influence of harm reduction marketing in fostering youth nicotine addiction. In the initial clinical studies supporting FDA approval it was never intended for these uses. As a matter of fact during the 13 week trials regular gum shown to have a 60% placebo effect in subjects enrolled in the study.

Recent studies raise a host of use concerns as smoking alternative because of nicotine side effects that most users will not notice until it’s too late. Researchers are concerned that nicotine is a super toxin that appears to destroy brain gray matter, prevent unhealthy cells throughout the body from dying natural deaths (apoptosis), promotes lung, breast and pancreatic cancer, hinders bone healing, induces angiogenesis which causes plaque build-up within arteries to harden, and that it accelerates tumor growth rates.

Better to try a more natural smoking alternative when you have the urge to smoke.

Tobacco Taxes Expected to Help you Quit Smoking, Hurt State Finances

Sharply rising tobacco taxes may accomplish what state lawmakers largely failed to do when handed a pile of money from the nationwide tobacco settlement a decade ago: drive home the consequences of smoking and cut smoking rates.

Bloomberg News has reported that the new 62-cent increase in the federal tobacco tax, combined with rising state tobacco taxes, could cut U.S. tobacco consumption by up to 10 percent.

States, however, may not be celebrating this odd approach to a new stop smoking alternative. Many took the money from the 1998 tobacco settlement and used it for everything but tobacco prevention. But declining tobacco consumption maybe the governments best stop smoking aid even those it could reduce the industry's annual payout to the states by up to $500 million, and also poses a threat to the $37 billion in bonds that states issued based on expected future receipts of tobacco money. The bonds were issued so that states could get an upfront, lump-sum payout of the settlement money rather than waiting for each year's payments, which are based on sales.

"While settlement revenues may be shrinking, most tobacco bond structures have debt service requirements with built-in increases for future years," said Richard Larkin, an analyst at municipal-bonds firm Herbert J. Sims and Co. Some state bond issues might have to use their reserves to pay the interest on the bonds, he added.

"States that earmarked revenues from cigarette excise taxes for specific programs may be forced to make cuts to those programs or increase the cigarette excise taxes, to make up for the revenue shortfall caused by the volume decline resulting from the federal excise tax increase," noted a recent report from Fitch Ratings.

"The striking irony of the [tobacco settlement] was that it made states dependent on the sale of a deadly product that dramatically increases their health-care costs," said Allan M. Brandt, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.  

Around the country, the tax on smokers  (that's those people that dont want to quit smoking or stop smoking)  has either risen already or will soon. Wednesday is the day Florida smokers will have to add another $1 per pack of smokes, an increase it is estimated will bring $900 million in revenue into the state, earmarked for cancer research and Medicaid expenses. Cigars are exempt; pipe and smokeless tobacco aren't.

Seems like a back assward way to get people to stop smoking. So does that make increaded taxes on cigarettes the Best Stop Smoking Aid? I doubt it!

This is one of those taxes that, ideally, won't bring in all the expected income that's anticipated, because some smokers will or mayquit smoking or at least cut  back off from their nicotine habit.

But the drive to stop smoking, especially among young people, is definitely a sign of the times nationally. Many states are looking at this potential revenue even on top of the 62-cent increase in the federal tax on cigarettes that went into effect this spring.

Connecticut, for example, is looking at 75-cents-per-pack increase, increasing the per-pack tax to $2.75, tying it with New York for the second-highest cigarette tax in the nation.

Rhode Island has the highest tobacco tax at $3.46 per pack.

Florida ranked 46th in the nation for cigarette excise taxes; effective Wednesday. we will rank 22nd.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, smokers who buy nonpremium brand cigarettes would pay either 25 or 43 cents a pack if its legislature uses this tax to pass an emergency budget that will avoid a shutdown of all but essential and mandated services at midnight Wednesday.

In Ohio, lawmakers are just beginning to consider a 75-cents-per-pack increase to raise $460 million over the next two years. But at the same time its legislature is balking at granting its department of health $6 million for tobacco-use prevention programs as a means of cutting Medicaid costs.

Clearly, as Gov. Charlie Crist said recently in considering the tobacco tax, the health benefits of hiking the cigarette tax by $1 a pack outweigh the political disadvantages of raising taxes. Indeed, the political advantages of this tax might be duly noted by employers who pay a share of the cost in not only health-insurance benefits but also the loss of productivity and absenteeism due to smoking-related illnesses of their work forces.

However, while enacting the new no cigarette smoking tax makes sense as a way of encouraging Floridians to stop smoking/quit smoking, it is not a broad-based tax. It falls mostly on the 2 million smokers and not the other 16 million residents.

The state should continue to look for ways to grow our tax base that is more equally distributed among all Floridians and which will help prevent cuts in services to Florida's most vulnerable citizens — poor children, the disabled, the elderly.

Changes in the entire tax structure, from removal of certain sales tax exemptions to expansion of the sales tax to include some services, to Florida's participation in a national move to routinely collect sales tax from remote, online sales, are obvious means. Our lawmakers — election year though they are facing — must nonetheless gather the courage to confront these alternatives if they are to prove themselves responsible financial managers and big-picture, long-term thinkers.

The answer may be in between the lines if some of the bureacrats will take the time to look at who is quitting smoking as a result of these taxes and who is not stopping smoking. I think the jury is still out.

Blog Food 6 2 2009

You want to quit smoking, or cut back on using tobacco, or maybe you don’t want to quit at all. Sometimes you just want an alternative to cigarettes and tobacco products when you want to smoke but just can’t light up.

Everyone tells you about nicotine gum and nicotine patches and how easy it is to quit … Well, there are all forms of nicotine replacement therapies that are advertised all over television and before you give in to replacing one form of nicotine for another give this some consideration. As unbelievable as it seems, addiction to those so called aids to quitting smoking like nicotine gum and nicotine patch addiction is for real!

Lots and lots of former smokers who quit smoking using gum and patches are still addicted to nicotine. Those smokers who may have quit using nicotine patches or other form of nicotine replacement therapies often report being unable to come off the patches or gum. Their nicotine addiction has continued on for many more months or even years after the gave up smoking. This much more than is told by epharmaceutical company's guide literature and goes unreported as required in their post marketing reporting to the FDA. They would say those numbers are not significant. Hog wash, not significant to who? What about those that have heart problems and other mutagenic problems that can be tracked back to nicotine.

So if your quitting smoking, thinking about cutting, or just not interesting in stopping smoking at all there are alternatives to nicotine that are natural, great tasting with significant success rates like smokerZchoice which gives you the freedom to decide what you want to do with out replacing one addiction with another.

Of course the decisions are yours as are the choices. Find the best product for what you need and you’ll find the right answer.